US Agent Orange threat persists

Agent Orange, the defoliant used in the Vietnam war, continues to contaminate livestock and fish eaten by Vietnamese decades after it was sprayed, a study showed yesterday.

A study in Bien Hoa city, about 20 miles north of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, in 2002 found high levels of dioxin in residents and food, the report in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine said.

About 95% of blood samples taken from 43 people in Bien Hoa "were found to have elevated TCDD levels", the most toxic of the dioxins.

"In certain areas of Vietnam food is clearly a present-day route of intake of dioxin from Agent Orange," it said.

Tests on 16 food samples of chickens, ducks, pork, beef and fish from the city's markets, a lake and a nearby air base where Agent Orange had been stored, found "markedly elevated" dioxin levels in six samples.

Vietnam estimates more than a million of its people have been exposed to Agent Orange, used from 1962 to 1971 to strip trees and deny communist fighters cover.